Month: October 2018

Based on the novel Suffer The Children by Adam Creed and adapted by Unforgotten’s Chris Lang, a feature-length version appeared a few years back on the now defunct ITV Encore. Now Dark Heart reappears, this time extended into a six-part series, two episodes a week for the next three weeks. That feature-length story has been…

If you know anything of the history of the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III, you’ll know what’s coming this week; but nothing will prepare you for the intensity of this episode, which contrasts pastoral beauty with unbelievable brutality. Negotiations between the Getty family and the Calabrian mafia have broken down, largely due to the…

Such is the slow-paced evolution of story arcs in The Deuce, it came as some surprise that in this, the second series’ penultimate episode, that one of the major characters died a grisly death. Not that death – in all its forms – is a surprise in this neighbourhood, but it was a surprise in…

On the heels of hit series Killing Eve, BBC America has greenlit The Watch, based on Sir Terry Pratchett’s wildly popular Discworld novels, which have sold more than 90 million books worldwide. The eight-episode series should makes its way over here on the BBC, most likely, is to be written by Simon Allen. The Watch is a ‘punk rock’ thriller inspired…

If you’ve stayed the course with Strangers these past two months, then I salute you. Unfortunately your reward for such unwavering loyalty was paltry this week, when the final episode sought to wrap everything up as awkwardly as possible in record time – a show suddenly conscious of it’s diminishing timescale after dawdling around for…

UKTV’s free-to-air digital channel, Drama, is welcoming back Kiwi crime drama, The Brokenwood Mysteries, for a fifth series. Starring Neill Rea and Fern Sutherland, The Brokenwood Mysteries is set in a seemingly quiet country town where the town’s newest resident, Detective Mike Shepherd, finds that murder lurks in even the most homely location. In the opening…

The BBC seems to have tapped into the high-concept modern thriller – things like Bodyguard, Informer and The Cry have all been different but very well received and scored huge viewing figures. And now it looks as though we’re going to have another one next year. Callum Turner and Cormoran Strike’s Holliday Grainger will lead…

For such a smart cookie, you’d have thought Oksana would have realised that she was being set up – having successfully killed inconvenient witness Nadia, she finds herself thrown into The Hole, and abandoned by Konstantin. We saw it coming – why didn’t she? After strong hints that Carolyn has spent the night with Konstantin…

There’s a very famous horror movie called Cannibal Holocaust that caused a huge amount of controversy on it’s release in the director’s native homeland of Italy. Ruggero Deodato had set out to make an exploitation movie about exploitation itself – inspired by the Italian media’s coverage of the Red Brigade murders of the 1970s, where…

It’s a busy week as we enter November. We say goodbye to Killing Eve – which has been great fun – and the lamentable Strangers. However, we also say hello to series four of Beck, the starry Homecoming on Amazon Prime (with Julia Roberts, no less), and Chris Lang’s Dark Heart on ITV. Enjoy! 1…

S.J.I. (Susi) Holliday grew up in East Lothian. A life-long fan of crime and horror, her short stories have been published in various places, and she was shortlisted for the CWA Margery Allingham competition in 2013. Susi’s debut psychological crime novel Black Wood was published by Black & White in March 2015, her second, Willow Walk, was released in May 2016, and The Damselfly followed in February…

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries is one of Australia’s most successful and exported shows. We do love a bit of the Golden Age crime shows, but now news reaches us that a modern-day spin-off will hit Aussie screens very soon. In its ‘upfronts’ channel Seven announced that Ms Fisher’s Modern Murder Mysteries is ready to go and will…